Abstract

Conflicts over use of land are part and parcel of human history. People use land in different ways, and also hold different opinions on how others should use it. In short, human aspirations concerning use of land differ considerably. An important question for planning is how these conflicts over land-use can be mediated, and possibly changed into so-called ‘win-win solutions’ or ‘multiple land-use’. This paper analyses the social dynamics which underlies this jargon. For the analysis it uses a relational or process-sociological approach. It defines land-use as a social process, which manifests itself in relations between land, people and individual human aspirations. The planning of land-use is a collective, intentional, intervention in the structure of these relations. This paper uses the approach to describe two different sorts of intervention mechanisms and illustrates their working with the historical development of land-use planning in the Netherlands. This analysis of Dutch land-use planning serves to critically assess the conventional understanding of power and responsibility in contemporary planning theory

Published in

Topos (Munchen)
2009, volume: 9, number: 1, pages: 10-13

Authors' information